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Inkscape Version 0.91 Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

Bryce writes: Four years since the last major Inkscape release, now news is out about version 0.91 of this powerful vector drawing and painting tool. The main reason for the multi-year delay is that they've switched from their old custom rendering engine to using Cairo now, improving their support for open source standards. This release also adds symbol libraries and support for Visio stencils, cross platform WMF and EMF import and export, a native Windows 64-bit build, scads of bug fixes, and much more. Check out the full release notes for more information about what has changed, or just jump right to downloading your package for Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X.

9 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Alright, time to pirate it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh wait, it's free? Clever Inkscape, very clever.

    1. Re:Alright, time to pirate it! by jonwil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually Inkscape is more of a competitor to Adobe Illustrator than Adobe Photoshop.

    2. Re:Alright, time to pirate it! by Bonker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The GIMP *wishes*.

      Inkscape is one of those 'Best of Breed' open source apps where it's pretty much all you need to do the task you're downloading it for. It beats the ever-living SNOT out of Illustrator on simplicity, ease-of-use, and, of course, price. You're not locked into Adobe's new SasS model or a huge license fee, yet can create great looking vector art with fantastic compatibility.

      Compare to, say, PuTTY, or VLC Media Player. They do a single job, and they do it REALLY freakin' well.

      GIMP does not. GIMP's UI is STILL a cluster@#$@ after years and years of development and user feedback, and the last time I checked, it still lacked the support for color matching that would make it viable for creating images that were print-ready.

      Frankly, if you're working on Windows, you are far more behooved to use Paint.Net than you are The GIMP.

      --
      The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
  2. Re:O...okay? by timothy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Inkscape is one of the handful of apps (along with The GIMP, Firefox, OpenOffice, and some others that could round out a nice top-10 or top-20) that together make up a good base set of software that's more than good enough for most people's computerizing needs. (And, in keeping with that idea, it's included in the defaults for many distros, which is appropriate.)

    What's funny is how limited / limiting the default software set is on Windows (a bit better on Mac OS X, but still falls short), if you're used to the kind of apps that come with a typical Linux distro, or are available for instant free download. The GIMP is not PhotoShop (you know how you can tell? You don't have to keep buying it each month ... ), and Inkscape is not Illustrator (ditto), but they're both *good,* and mean you / the 900 students in the school down the street / etc. can be playing with and using them now, for free, forever.

    No one can make anyone care about this or much of anything, but quality open-source / Free software has a lot of person-hours behind it, and its worth celebrating, especially when the releases are separated by such a long time.

    Serious answer for a question I suspect is pure troll, but Hey, it's my day off, and everyone needs a hobby ;)

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  3. Underrated Inkscape tool: Vectorizing by timothy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the coolest things about Inkscape is that it does a good job of converting bitmapped images to vectors, which is especially nice if you want to combine source elements created in a raster-art program at wildly different scales. This capability is found in other software, I know, but Inkscape makes it relatively simple and (at least if you're going to use the results *in* Inkscape) saves some steps.

    This is also a fun way to decompose images into constituent color layers, separate them, and then play with the resulting layers -- cool high-contrast results sometimes in combining just 2 or 3 of the resulting layers.

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  4. Inkscape plays nicely with Inkcut - vinyl cutting by chaosdivine69 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since this is really a slashvertisement I may as well add some more fuel to the fire. If you're already brave enough to use Inkscape as your bread winner, perhaps you've thought about branching out into making signs? If this is the case then you should definitely check out Inkcut http://sourceforge.net/project... Just add a vinyl cutter to the mix and you're rolling. GIMP, Inkscape and Inkcut, all you need to start making signs on the cheap.

  5. Re:Ad by timothy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, for Inkscape we at Slashdot just take a small percentage of the purchase price for every copy shipped; maybe we could work out a similar deal for your product -- what it is? This works best if your product is high-quality open-source software ;)

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  6. Video demoing the new features by Bryce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Inkscaper Alexandre Prokoudine provides a nicely visual article about the release, including a video to demonstrate some of the new things you can do with it: http://libregraphicsworld.org/...

  7. Windows Users - Performance Tweak by ZeroNullVoid · · Score: 5, Informative

    For Windows, the UI will seem to lag or not redraw in real-time while drawing or using it.
    Disable Rulers (ctrl + r, or Menu: View -> Show/Hide -> Rulers) will fix it.
    I spoke with the very helpful people on Inkscape's IRC Channel for this tip.

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ink...

    This may also apply to some versions of The G.I.M.P.